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II.—On Two Undescribed Coniferous Fruits from the Secondary Rocks of Britain1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

William Carruthers
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Extract

It is a singular coincidence that in a former communication to this Magazine (Vol. VI., p. 1) I described, among other Coniferous fruits, two from the Gault at Folkestone, the one the cone of a pine, and the other of a Wellingtonia, and that in this communication I propose to describe two hitherto unknown fruits from the same deposit and found at the same locality, belonging also the one to a Wellingtonia and the other to a pine. Although the small pinecone already described (Pinites gracilis) differs in form and in the arrangement of the scales from any known cone, recent or fossil, it is more nearly related to that group of the section Pinea, the members of which are now associated with the Wellingtonias in the west of North America, than with any other member of the great genus Pinus. I, however, hesitated to refer to this interesting fact, because the occurrence of the two cones in the Gault might have been due to their being accidentally brought into the same silt by rivers having widely separated drainage areas. And it is easier to keep back generalizations based on imperfect data, than to suppress them after publication, when in the progress of investigation they are shown to be false. But I have now to describe a second pinecone more closely related to the Californian species of Pinea, and with it a new species of Wellingtonia. These surely point with tolerable certainty to the existence of a Coniferous vegetation on the high lands of the Upper Cretaceous period having a fades similar to that now existing in the mountains on the west of North America, between the thirtieth and fortieth parallels of latitude. No fossil referable to Sequoia has hitherto been found in strata older than the Gault, and here on the first appearance of the genus we find it associated with pines of the same group that now flourish by its side in the New World.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 8 , Issue 90 , December 1871 , pp. 540 - 544
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1871

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Footnotes

1

This paper is supplementary to one published in Vol. VI. of the Geological Magazine, at page 1.

References

page 542 note 1 Trautschold, in a recent memoir (Nouv. Mem. Soc. Nat. de Moscow, vol. xiii., 1871, p. 225), has separated, hut without sufficient reason, the fossil from Kline, near Moscow, which Eichwald described as Geinitzia cretacea, Endl. (Lethæ Rossica, vol. ii., p. 48), and has placed it in the genus Araucarites, under the name A. hamatus, His uniting Araucarites crassifolius, Corda, in Eichwald, l.c. p. 50, pl. iv., fig. 10, is, as far as Eichwald's figure and description are concerned, obviously an error. Trautschold's figure (pl. xxi., fig. 3) shows in one of the branches a cone, which belongs to Sequoia, judging from the form and direction of the scales; a similar fruit is represented in pl. xxi., fig. 7. This is described as a new species under the name Pinus elliptica (p. 227), with the following diagnostic characters: “ Strobilis ellipticis, squamis apice valde incrassatis, dorso rhomboidali carina transversali dimidiate, in medio carinse tuberculo prominente.” The size of the cone, the form of the scales, and the absence of imbrication in the scales, are characters which would place the cone in Sequoia, while the transverse carina and the prominent tubercle fall in with this interpretation of its position. A similar cone is given in the upper part of fig. 6, pl. xxi. If the restoration of the scale as given by Eichwald (l.e. pl. v., fig. 8, f, g, h) is accurate, it would throw doubt as to whether this fossil can be placed in the recent genus Sequoia, but it would certainly be nearly related to it, and far removed from Pinus, or Araucaria, with which Trautschold has associated it. In his text Trautschold considers this cone as nearly allied to Pinus primœva, Lindl. and Hutt: but I have shown that this is a true Cycadean fruit (Geol. Mag., 1867, Vol. IV., p. 105). The facies of the flora from Kline suggest to me that they are of Cretaceous age.